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Brooklyn Nine-Nine 1.22: Charges and Specs

“Im celebrating. My name’s Jake Peralta and I just got fired from the NYPD.”

Although it was recently called out as being one of the most aggravating TV tropes I think opening this episode in media res worked really well. We know that Jake presumably gets fired at some point during the episode, but we don’t know the how or the why, and it certainly didn’t play out the way I expected.

A week before Jake gets fired, he is called into the Captain’s office where Commissioner Podolsky is waiting for him. He orders Jake to stop investigating Lucas Wind, a civic leader and community center owner who Jake believes is laundering money for drug dealers.

Jake disobeys the Captain’s orders and takes Amy with him on a stakeout. Wind spots Peralta, and Jake is forced on administrative leave before while he awaits a hearing to appeal a possible six-month suspension. This isn’t enough to dissuade Peralta though, who finds out from his Informant (and Pawnee Resident) that there is a ledger in the community center that contains evidence of the money laundering scheme. Captain Holt agrees to help Jake investigate, and Andre Braugher absolutely kills it hitting on the female judge.

Meanwhile, back at the office, Charles is a mess. Vivian has broken up with him, leaving him as a shell of a man relegated to eating hard-boiled eggs in an outfit from The Matrix. Rosa, Terry, and Gina all try to help Charles get over his breakup as best they can, with Gina’s advice to Rosa being to sleep with him.

With the signed warrant, Holt, Santiago, and Peralta can legally investigate the community center. They go undercover as competitors of the center’s Amateur Ballroom Dancing Competition, and thanks to a distraction from Amy, Jake is able to sneak upstairs to get the evidence he needs. Just before they enter the hearing, Captain Holt asks Jake to do something for him that sounds crazy; get fired.

Jake puts his trust in Holt, gets himself fired, and goes undercover to work for the FBI as a disgruntled ex-cop. It is a six-month gig, and by my calculations we have about six months until the Season 2 Premiere of one of the better shows on television.

Jake’s work undercover with the FBI will be dangerous, and so he finally opens up to Amy about his true feelings, which are that he would have liked something to have happened between the two of them, romantic style. Also Boyle wakes up in bed next to Gina.

For me this Season Finale was the perfect culmination of what has been an at-times rocky but mostly stellar first seasons of television. Jake puts his unqualified trust in Captain Holt, and lets Amy knows he has feelings for her. The temptation might have been to end with Jake and Amy together, or to at least have Charles wake up next to Rosa rather than Gina. In my opinion either of those couplings would have felt rushed.

What did you all think? Did you smiling cat it, or were you left feeling more like an angry devil mask? Eggplant.